


Travelin' Soldier

by hellsyeah



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - War, Character Death, M/M, Soldiers, Song fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-11
Updated: 2013-11-11
Packaged: 2018-01-01 05:46:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1041058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellsyeah/pseuds/hellsyeah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam Winchester was just a waiter trying to do his job. Gabriel Novak was a boy that was just doing his duty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Travelin' Soldier

**Author's Note:**

> Song fic based on the song Travelin' Soldier by The Dixie Chicks.
> 
> I'm so sorry.

                Gabriel Novak was in the army. He had been drafted the day he turned 18 and two days later was expected to be on a bus and on his way to basic training. Then he was going to be shipped off to fight for his country and leave everything he ever had behind. He was the youngest of four children and all of his brothers had already gone through basic and two of them had even been able to return home after being injured in action. His brother Luke was still deployed, and refused to give up the fight. Gabriel thought sometimes that his brother never planned on coming back regardless of the war. He had already packed the required bag and just had to wait the hours until his bus would be around to pick him up.

                The diner was just a few blocks from his small apartment and he figured that if this was going to be his last good meal for a while he might as well make sure it’s a good one, and Ellen made the best food in town. His uniform was stiff and clean on his body and didn’t crease when he threw his bag over his shoulder and locked his door behind him. The air was warm and he had to resist wiping his forehead on his sleeves and tried to ignore the way his nice shoes clacked against the ground as he walked.

                The sign on Harvelle's Roadhouse Diner was chipped and in serious need of a redesign but it was the best place in the tiny town and it caught Gabriel off guard with how much nostalgia he was already feeling towards it. Considering he hadn’t even left yet. He shuffled through the door and when he didn’t see Ellen behind the counter sighed and slid into an empty booth near a back window. The walls were wooden and covered in family photos from across the community. Gabriel knew that somewhere on the walls was a picture of him and his family, parents he didn’t have any more and brothers he hadn’t talked to in a while.

 

                Sam Winchester was new to the Harvelle work-force. He had just turned 16 and was finally old enough to get a job to help his brother support the household. Ellen had hired him without a moment’s thought and let him eat his meals free as long as he worked hard. Jo, Ellen’s fourteen year old daughter, had put a bowtie around his neck when he came into work today and he’d nearly forgotten about it, until Ash, who helps Ellen cook, said it looked too fancy for the diner, but Ellen told him to leave it on. He grinned when Ellen shooed him back onto the diner floor to take more orders. In the corner booth sat a boy not much older than him in army greens and Sam swallowed, thinking about his brother, who had been deployed at one point, but due to a bullet to the shoulder was deemed too injured to keep fighting. He didn’t want to go through that, he didn’t think anyone needed to get drafted like that.

                “What can I get you today, sir?” Gabriel looked up at the tall boy standing at the end of the booth and frowned.

                “That sir better not be because of this dammed uniform,” Sam shook his head at the man and pointed at the pad in his hands.

                “Just doing my job, actually,” he grinned when the man ducked his head. Gabriel straightened his shoulders and smiled.

                “Hey, kid, I know this is weird but would you mind talking to me for a while? I’m not feeling too bright at the moment.” Gabriel toyed with the buttons on his shirt and didn’t look up at the kid.

                Sam hesitated and bit his lip – he knew how being drafted could affect someone, he’d seen it with his brother – and nodded, “I get off in about an hour. I know a place we can talk, if you want to wait?” Sam nearly took a step back at the bright smile he received from the soldier. Gabriel agreed and ordered his meal and promised to wait for Sam to get off.

 

                As he promised an hour later Sam was off and gestured for the man to follow him out. They exchanged small talk as Sam led them from the diner to a small dirt road. Sam had already memorized the name Gabriel Novak before they even got to the opening that looked out on the lake he and his brother swam in during the summers. The soldier was funny and charming and just shorter than him. Sam’s heart ached for the cheerful guy beside him who was about to go out and turn into a hard-hitting soldier. Gabriel sat down at the end of the pier and stared out at the other side of the lake.

                “You probably have a girlfriend, but I really don’t care,” Sam shifted slightly to the side to watch Gabriel’s face. He turned and caught Sam’s staring but just smiled, “I don’t have anyone to write, would you mind if I wrote you?”

                Sam’s heart dropped, “You don’t have anyone?”

                “No one that cares,” Gabriel kept his smile but Sam saw how sad it really was.

                “No,” he reached out and smoothed down the fabric of Gabriel’s army jacket, “I wouldn’t mind getting a letter or two. I might even write back.” Another smile that made Sam want to fall backwards, but Gabriel caught him by reaching out to straighten Sam’s bowtie, they both blushed and looked down at the water.

 

                Sam waited by the mailbox for the first letter, a blank envelope addressed to him from a station out in California. It was mostly just Gabriel complaining about how the food was horrible and that he’d never been so tired in his life. One remark about how the wait staff there was lacking and not as cute as the one’s he’s used to, had Sam blushing and hiding his face from his older brother. He wrote back quickly, knowing that Gabriel would only be at that station for a few weeks.

                Letter’s came and went and Sam knew he was screwed. Gabriel would often write about stories from when he was younger and what he missed about life outside of his bases. Sometimes Sam would re-read a letter several times and cry at how broken his soldier was starting to sound.

                Eight months into Gabriel’s deployment Sam got a letter that made his drop to the ground outside the house and cry until his brother came to drag him home.

_Hey kiddo,_

_It’s getting tough to wake up these days. We’ve lost a couple men, guys that I had begun to consider my brothers. I look over at the empty cots sometimes and just cry because they had families to go back to, ya know? Moms and Dads and girlfriends and wives._

_All I’ve got is you._

_When I wake up in the middle of the night. When I hear an explosion in the distance. On the days I remember that my older brother is out here fighting too, somewhere. When I don’t think I can keep fighting this war that I don’t even approve of._

_I think back to that afternoon sitting on that rickety old pier – I’m still not convinced that thing is safe – and I think about a boy with chocolate hair. I think about those dimples that haunt my dreams and that stupid bowtie that wouldn’t stay on straight no matter how many times you straightened it._

_It’s like the day brightens when I think about that day. My heart may not be in the fight anymore but I’m pretty sure it loves you, Sam._

_I’ll be home soon._

_Gabriel Novak_

                It was relatively short compared to some of the things Gabriel had sent before but it was the letter that had Sam grasping at words to try to respond to. And the letter that found its permanent place on Sam’s bedside table. Sam wrote his letter back telling Gabriel that he was strong and that he could make it through the war no problem. He ended the letter with saying: “My heart loves you too.”

 

                Sam got a few more letters after that, some of them that described how Gabriel couldn’t wait to come home so he could see Sam and so he could find his brothers and say he was sorry for never trying to contact them. Some of them described a life he wanted to have when he got home; he wanted to go to school and get a job, he wanted to take Sam on a date, he wanted to travel the world, and he wanted to settle down in that tiny town and get food from Harvelle’s until the day he died, fat and old. Preferably with Sam by his side to help him remember to take his ‘old-people pills.’

                Then the letters stopped. For two months Sam waited for the mailman every day, and every day the mailman would shake his head, hand Sam mail for Dean, and go on his way. Sam re-read every letter Gabriel had ever sent him and started sleeping less as he worried for his soldier. He’d run his hands along the words and pause for an extra second at the end of each letter where Gabriel always signed _I’ll be home soon._

About a month and a week after the last letter was received, Sam was at one of his high-schools football games. They were losing but he didn’t care, he was only there because his brother made him get out of the house. He was sitting in the bottom row by himself when half-time started. A man with a microphone walked to the middle of the field and started speaking.

                “Ladies and gentlemen if you would please bow your heads in remembrance of some fallen locals,” Sam’s heart clenched and he refused to bow his head for this war, he focused on the man as he rattled off three names that Sam didn’t know, though he heard gasps and cries behind him on the seats. It was the last name that made him slide out of his seat and run behind the stands, “Gabriel Novak.”

                He sat under the stands for the rest of the game, sobbing into a wrinkled piece of paper and clutching a piece of fabric he had torn from his neck. A bow-tie that refused to stay straight anyway. His brother would come to find him eventually. Sam flipped the paper over and read over his own words, hastily scribbled onto the page just two weeks after Gabriel’s last letter. He cried as he read them, choking on the words:

                _I’m never going to hold the hand of another guy, just yours. They said I was too young for you, but I will wait for you. My traveling soldier. We’ll love forever. Never to be alone again, once your letter says that my soldier is coming home._

                


End file.
